"What?" Kyrie asked. She pushed the parking brake down with her foot, as she reached blindly for her cell phone. "Let me see that."
She pulled the cell phone from Tom's nerveless hands, and went to the menu and calls received, and paged, frantically, up and down the list.
She realized she was shaking violently, and she put the phone down on the seat, very slowly, then very slowly lowered her head towards the wheel, until she rested her forehead on it.
"You mean the whole call . . ." she said, at last. "You mean, he just reached into my mind." For some reason the thought made her physically ill. Reaching into her head to trick her seemed like the worst violation possible. "How could he? How?"
"I don't know. I think he has some sort of mind power," Tom said, hesitantly. He laid his palm gently on her shoulder, as if he were afraid of touching her. But when she didn't protest, he enveloped her in his arms and pulled her to him. "I'm sorry, Kyrie. I think this is worse than anything we faced before."
For a moment, it comforted her, that he held her like that, tightly, against his body. He was still naked—she was quite sure he had forgotten that—and his skin smelled of the hotel's soap overlaid with sweat from fear and fight. It was not unpleasant. His hair was loose—as it always was after he shifted back and forth. He kept a package of hair ties in the glove compartment of the car, in a kitchen drawer at home, and in one of the supply rooms in the diner. His hair brushed her face, softly, like silk.
And for a moment—for just a moment, as her breath calmed down—this felt good and protective and healing. She had a sense that she belonged to him—that she was his, that Tom was somehow entitled to hold her like this and that he—as scattered and lost as he'd been most of his life—he was somehow protecting her. As he'd protected her, or tried to, in that kitchen.
But slowly the thought intruded that he was just looking after her because he looked after everyone—Old Joe, Conan, Not Dinner, and even Keith and Anthony to an extent. Tom seemed to think it was his duty, his necessary place in life, to go through it helping everyone and everything. And this made his arms around her, his soothing voice, the hand now gently stroking her hair and cheek, utterly meaningless.
She shrank back, laughing a little, disguising her embarrassment at having been, momentarily, emotionally naked. "You must put clothes on," she said. "What if someone looks in the car and sees me sitting here with two naked guys?"
"I don't have clothes," Conan said from the back seat, his voice dull and seemingly trying to be distant, as if he were apologizing for being present during their embrace. He hardly needed to.
Tom pulled back. He took a deep breath, as if he needed to control himself, and she didn't look down to see if he needed to control himself in that sense. It wouldn't help to know he'd been embracing her out of automatic pity but that lust had mixed in. She wanted to know he had held her for other reasons—she wasn't even sure what reasons she wanted it to be. Perhaps because he felt so incomplete without her, that he had to hold her and protect her to be able to hold and protect himself. She wanted him to think of them as a unit, she thought. As belonging. And perhaps that was, ultimately, her greatest foolishness, that she so desperately wanted to belong with someone. Not to. She had no fancy to be owned or restricted in that way. For much too long, growing up, she had belonged to the state of North Carolina—had been in effect the child of the state—that she did not want to belong to anyone. But she wanted to belong with someone, to be part of a group. Not at the mercy of passing bureaucrats and their whims, but able to contribute and be taken into account by a group.
She'd thought she was part of that. Even days ago, if you had asked her, she'd have said that she and Tom and Rafiel were just that sort of group. A you and me against the world group.
But now the dire wolf could get in her mind and force her own friendship for Rafiel to betray her. And Tom was determined to protect the world and its surroundings. "There's clothes under the seat," she told Conan. "Get some for Tom too. We stuff them there, when we go shopping. We buy extra stuff, I wash it and stuff it down there. From the thrift shop, so they're clean but worn."
"Worn is fine," Conan said, as he passed, over Kyrie's shoulder, a grey pair of sweat pants and a red sweat shirt to Tom.
"I think you should go shower," Kyrie said. "Both of you. I'll go inside"—she made a head gesture towards the diner—"and hold the fort, while you guys make yourselves decent."
Tom frowned a little but then nodded. "If he comes in the diner—" he said.
"I'll call, okay? I don't think he's going to do much in front of every customer at the tables, truly."
"You don't know that," Tom said. "He could reach in and touch your mind. Like he did before. We don't know how many minds he can touch. He could make everyone in the diner ignore him, as he kills you or dismembers you."
"I'll call you. I'll call you as soon as he comes," she said, almost frantically, wanting to go back to the diner, which right now represented routine and normalcy, and to be allowed to go on with life, to forget that someone out there—someone who didn't wish them well—had the power to reach into her mind and make her hear and think things that had never happened.